


A Comic Walks Into a Hotel Room

by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: And so this happened, Blame Everyone I Know, But I Think I Still Got Some Good Jokes in There, F/M, I Was Forcibly Dragged Into the Trash, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Season/Series 03, Smut, This Turned Out Angstier Than Expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:08:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22453930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/pseuds/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels
Summary: When she's fucked up and left on the tarmac, Midge realizes there's only one place she feels that she can go.
Relationships: Lenny Bruce (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)/Miriam "Midge" Maisel
Comments: 52
Kudos: 331
Collections: Numerous OTPS Infinite Fandoms





	A Comic Walks Into a Hotel Room

**Author's Note:**

> Congratulations to extasiswings, phoenixwrites, and countless others who bribed, blackmailed, and begged me into this nonsense. I hate you all.

She’s fucked up.

She fucked up, she has fucked up, she _is_ fucked up—all possible variations of the meaning of that sentence, she is.

In retrospect, it’s the kind of hilariously idiotic thing that she’d lampoon in a set: the dumb, pretty uptown girl who blithely wandered into the Apollo and nearly outed a famous musician to his entire hometown because she assumed (and you know what they say about people who assume) they knew he was gay.

As if anyone can know that you’re gay. As if that’s ever really _safe_ for people to know.

She feels naïve, for the first time in a long time. She feels stupid and young and foolish.

There’s nothing to do but go home, now—except what is home? Where is home? It’s not with Benjamin. She screwed that up, royally. It’s not with Joel because, who even knows what’s up with Joel. She can’t trust him, that much is clear (at least with her heart, he’s good with the kids, and that’s a silver lining). Mama and Papa? She’s not even opening that can of worms.

Where can she run to? Who can she run to? Where do you go when there’s nowhere left?

Susie’s going to judge her for this, she just knows it.

But she books her plane ticket anyway.

* * *

They say if you speak of the devil, he’s gonna appear, although that sounds real attention-seeking and desperate of the guy if you ask Lenny, and Lenny’s pretty sure most devils have better things to do with their time. So he’s not too worried, generally. When he gets a knock on his hotel room door, he doesn’t think, _aw crap she figured me out_ , he thinks, _did I order room service?_

It’s not room service, though, it’s the brunette he was thinking about, and trying not to think about, because he’s too damn old (and yet, young, he knows he’s still young, and it makes it extra pathetic that he feels so, so old) to be mooning after the popular preppy girl like he’s back before his bar mitzvah, and hey. Maybe devils can feel when you think about them, after all.

Midge looks—well she looks pretty put together considering she also looks like she’s falling apart. “Hi.”

No pithy remark, no joke, that’s bad. “Hi yourself. Did the cat drag you in or a bad wind?” _Stop staring, you’re staring, well so are you, how could anyone not stare…_

“Little bit of both. Actually I dragged myself here. More like there wasn’t anywhere else to drag myself. This is the tall glass of water in the desert—actually the tall glass of alcohol, please tell me you’ve got booze.” She walks past him into his hotel room, the room where they stopped last time, the room where she said she should get a cab…

“It’s like you don’t even know me,” he retorts, closing the door behind her. “Of course I have booze. If you want actual food, though, that’s where you’re in trouble.”

Midge sets down her purse, and takes off her gloves, and her coat, and her shoes, and Lenny’s starting to genuinely panic (hope) that she’ll take off the rest when she flings herself facedown onto his bed and says, “I fucked up.”

“Welcome to the club. I’m the president. Membership’s free to start but the monthly dues are awful.” He sits down next to her, but doesn’t touch her. “Midge.”

“Lenny.” Her tone is deadpan.

“Hey, c’mon, what kind of husband-maybe-brother of seven years-or-weeks would I be if you couldn’t talk to me about this kind of stuff?”

Midge groans into the bedcovers. And this is a bad idea, it’s a very bad idea, but his career and life are founded on a string of bad-to-worse ideas and if he didn’t have impulse control at age ten why start now, so he leans over and presses the heels of his hands into her shoulders, starts working the kinks out.

“…are you massaging me?” Midge turns her head to the side and squints at him like he might have been replaced by an alien while she wasn’t looking.

“Used to do this for Honey,” Lenny explains. “After work her muscles would be all… anyway.” He doesn’t want to talk about Honey. That was a series of fiascos on top of a disaster cake iced with ludicrously.

Midge makes a noise in response. He’s not sure if it’s a moan of relaxation, of encouragement, or if she’s just generally unleashing her grievances out to the world. Silence reigns for several minutes, during which time he valiantly (hey, he can be valiant, sometimes, even if he can’t quite manage ‘decent’) strives to think only about delivering a good massage and not about what it feels like to have Midge’s bare skin under his hands. Why does she insist on wearing these strapless dresses? Is she trying to push men off the edge into madness?

“You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“I give a gorgeous woman a massage and I’m not allowed to tell anyone about it? Midge. Light of my life. You’re killing me.”

“No, I mean…” Midge huffs and blows some of her hair out of her face. “What I’m about to tell you.”

“I’m something of an expert in fucking up—I know, I know, that’s hard to believe, but just imagine it for a second—and last I checked you didn’t tell anyone about all the times your family had to bail me out of prison, so, your secrets are safe with me. Who is he?”

Midge sits up, nearly knocking him off the bed. “Who’s who?”

“I assume a he is involved. You’re not in prison, so it’s not your stand up.”

Midge gives him a deeply, deeply unimpressed look. “It was my stand up. And there is a he involved, but I didn’t sleep with him. I just… nearly, um, outed him. To a huge crowd. At the Apollo.”

Several dots connect in his head—he’s good at connecting dots, too good, going faster than everyone else and that’s why he’s funny, because he connects the dots before they do, in ways they never could, and he shows them off to people and they go, _wow_ , and that _wow_ is so addictive he’s thrown himself into prison for it—the dots connect and he realizes what she’s saying, who she’s saying it about, and…

“Huh, you really did fuck up, that’s—that’s usually my level of mess here, Midge, I gotta say I’m kind of impressed.”

She glares at him. “I thought they… they were his hometown. They knew him. I guess I just knew him better than I was supposed to know him, better than they knew him, and I should’ve known…”

For the first time since he’s met her, he’s finding Midge in a state of… fragility. It’s a quick and unsettling turnaround. Midge has been in some pretty tight spots—they met in jail, after all—but she’s had this buoyancy, this determined pluck, that’s always kept her head above water.

“Hey, look. We’ve all made mistakes, I mean look at me. I’m a verified screwup. But I always land back on my feet and so will you. Better than I ever could.”

Midge sits fully up at that. “You know, there’s been something that I’ve wondered about, and you might have to get serious here for a couple seconds and I know that’s painful for you but do your best, I promise it’s like a band-aid, it’ll be over quickly if you just let it happen.”

“Funny, that’s what my mom told my sister about her first time.”

“You don’t have a sister.”

“Then who am I talking to?” He gasps and clutches at his heart. “Are you not my sister? Have you been lying to me? And after we’ve been married all this time!”

Midge fixes him with a look, and he grins. “Scout’s honor, I’ll be serious. Ask away.”

“You aren’t a scout.”

“Well you know what they say—once a scout, always a scout.”

“You were never a scout.”

“Well you know what they say—never a scout… always a scout.” He does the little salute thing that he’s seen Boy Scouts do.

That seems to work for Midge, who sighs. “Why have you always… done stuff for me? You’ve always gone out of your way for me. And you paid me back for the bail long ago, so don’t use that as an excuse.”

Whatever it is between them, they’ve never talked about it. They’ve danced together, her head on his shoulder, the strawberry-coconut smell of her shampoo in his nose, his fingers trailing along her arm. They’ve joked about being married, being lovers. They’ve stared at each other, stared at the bed, he’s given her his jacket. They joke and tease and they hold each other up. But they never talk about it.

It’s been safe not to talk about it. First because he was married, second because she was… married? Not married? It was a mess. Third because his life is a disaster and he didn’t want to drag her into that. Fourth—he’s really fuckin’ aware that she’s too good for him. Bulls aren’t allowed in china shops.

Only now—the china’s got chips in it, a few smudges, and it looks like they’re talking about it.

“I’ll tell you, if you let me tell you a joke first.”

Midge shrugs. “All right, I’ll bite.”

“What do you call a guy who does all the stuff he’d usually do to get in a girl’s pants, only without the expectation of getting in her pants?”

Midge stares at him.

“Okay, we’ll go with this one. What do you call a guy who likes a girl and knows that nothing’s going to happen, but he can’t stop himself from liking her anyway and trying to help her out anyway? Because she also happens to be brilliant and he’s pretty damn sure he’s going to drink or snort himself into an early grave and someone’s gotta be around to pick up the torch?”

Midge is still staring.

“A sucker.” He offers her up the answer. “That’s the punchline. Still needs work, clearly, but y’know I can’t be a genius off the cuff twenty-four-seven, gotta workshop a few of ‘em.”

“Lenny,” Midge says, and her voice is very soft, and he’s certain that he detects pity there.

Yeah, well. He expected the pity, it’s okay. Between comedy and jail and women, he’s used to rejection.

Except Midge doesn’t pull away, or say she was sorry, or pat his cheek and offer to get him water or something. She pushes herself up and softly, like they’re still dancing in that smoky room, presses her lips to his.

She pulls away, and his heart is thudding so loudly that he’s sure it could lead a conga line.

“This is a bad idea,” Midge tells him.

“Totally,” he agrees.

That’s around the time Midge climbs into his lap.

* * *

There’s a part of her brain that’s screaming _what are you doing_ at the top of its lungs, but she’s ignoring that part and it’s getting steadily quieter as she settles into Lenny’s lap and sucks his tongue into her mouth. She knew he’d be a dirty kisser, with a mouth like that, and she’s thrilled to be proven right.

She’s a mess, and maybe she shouldn’t be doing this right now—she’s proven to herself before that having a desperate one night stand when she’s in an emotional state only leads to mild disaster like, oh yes, the ruination of her engagement—but Lenny is ridiculous and open and raw, he’s a disaster too and he’s never tried to hide it, and he’s heard all her routines, seen the dirty laundry, and he’s _safe_ in a way that no one else ever has been.

“Not for nothing,” he manages, “because I could play baseball with this thing right now, but are you sure? Midge—” He gets his hands around her face and tugs her back, and she never knew he could be so gentle. “—are you sure?”

She shifts her hips, grinds down, and oh yeah, he could bat 3000 with that thing as far as she’s concerned. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”

“I’m trouble.”

“I want trouble.” He can’t be more trouble than Joel, anyhow. Or more trouble than she herself is. “What, a little scared to play in the big leagues?”

“I know at least five jokes about pitching and they’ve all flown out of my fucking head.”

“Well, good.” She starts to undo her dress. “If you could actually think of jokes right now, I’d be concerned about my performance.”

Lenny’s eyes are very firmly on her chest when he says, “All I can tell you is that if the police heard when I’m thinking, they’d never even bother posting bail.”

She’s got a smart remark to go with that, of course she does, but then Lenny leans forward and puts his mouth to the swell of her breast and oh, yeah, okay, jokes? What are jokes? She’s got nothing.

Her hands dig into his hair as he sucks at her, nips playfully, makes her arch. She can’t remember the last time Joel spared this much attention to touching her like this—maybe never, their trysts were always of the rush and turgid sort—and then Lenny’s mouth moves up to her neck and _bites_ and she makes the kind of noise that will have the neighbors wondering if a cat died.

She laughs, and Lenny pulls away, looking up at her. He’s not disappointed or frustrated, though, in fact he looks amused. “Care to share with the audience?”

“I sound like a dying cat,” she admits. She was always trying to be… to be perfect, with Joel. Even in the middle of sex she would control her noises, tried to sound breathy and delicate, gasping out the kind of things she thought he wanted, needed, to hear. She certainly never sounded like this.

Lenny looks absolutely delighted. “Y’know, I was wondering if someone was strangling a chicken next door but you’re right, dying cat suits better.”

“Ah, he’s so funny, he should be a comedian,” she replies, but she’s grinning far too hard for it to be at all biting, and then she shoves him down onto the bed so she can get him out of his damn clothes.

There’s a fair bit of uncoordinated wrestling, since Lenny is just as determined to get her out of her clothes, and to her surprise he’s far more adept at the whole undoing-clasps business than Joel was. At her expression, he smirks. “What? You learn to get fast at these things when you’re in bar bathrooms.”

“Why’d you even bother taking them off in bar bathrooms!?”

“Didn’t you?”

“You think I’d let my clothes touch whatever’s on the floor in a bar?”

“…you know what, that is entirely fair.” Lenny takes her dress and makes a show of delicately laying it over the back of the nearby desk chair, then does a little _ta-da_ movement.

Midge crooks her finger at him. “You think you’re very cute, don’t you?”

“Well,” Lenny says seriously, crawling back, his weight settling onto her, “my mom always did say so.”

She’s laughing—and when was the last time she laughed during sex? Did she _ever_ laugh during sex?—so it takes her a moment to realize that Lenny’s kissing down her stomach and pushing open her thighs and… basically he’s still going, with his mouth, and she’s never… no one’s ever… what is he even…

The next sound is less ‘dying cat’ and more ‘surprised horse’, if you ask her, but she hasn’t got the breath to tell Lenny that. His hands (and how has she never realized his hands were so big before, why is she only seeing it now) are digging into her thighs, keeping them apart so that she can only squirm helplessly while he licks into her, curls his tongue around and against her clit, flicks at her and teases her and _sucks_. It’s all new, it’s so new, and she’s tugging at his hair pretty viciously but Lenny hasn’t stopped to complain so she’s assuming it’s fine and anyway she couldn’t let go for anything, and she tries to warn him—she knows from experience that the finale doesn’t taste all that pleasant—but all that comes out are garbled words and Lenny holds her down with an arm across her stomach and she feels like a window that somebody shattered (with a baseball, her mind supplies, thinking it’s fucking hilarious) as she goes boneless.

Her fingers, her toes, even, are twitching and she’s not quite sure her brains are still in her skull. Lenny looks like the cat that broke into a cream factory as he slides two fingers into her, twisting them slowly. She mewls—that’s another new sound, a baby kitten, she’s a fucking barnyard at this point—because it feels so good but it’s close to too much.

“I really wish you could see your face right now,” Lenny says, and his voice is… the words could be the setup for a joke, but his voice is anything but. It’s low, and serious, and his eyes are… well, she wishes that he could see his face right now, that’s all she’s going to say on the matter. It’s like when he was staring at her in the club, only, somehow, even more.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” she says, because there’s a part of her that still hears the lessons from her mother, from magazines, from her college. _Give and give and give and never take, always be demure, always be grateful, never ask for more, serve, be perfect._

“Midge.” Lenny moves up to her, but his fingers are still inside her, and it changes the angle, hitting something and she loses the ability to see for three seconds. “When have you ever seen me to do something I don’t want to do?”

His thumb passes over her clit and a rather undignified moan (and there’s the cow) leaves her. Lenny looks altogether too pleased with himself at that, and y’know what? She bragged about Jewish girls on stage once.

Time to put her money where her mouth is.

Or, rather, to put her mouth… well.

She kisses him again first, though, because who would’ve thought that Lenny Bruce was _sweet?_

(He sent her flowers after she supported his television appearance, he bailed her out of jail, he met her parents and impressed her father more than even Benjamin did, Lenny is, he is, he _is_ —and she’ll never tell a soul.)

He goes easily enough, though, when she pushes him back into the bed a second time, and starts on a joke, something about, “Oh, be my guest, don’t let me stop you,” only he never finishes because hey she’s got some Parisian whores to impress.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Lenny swears, and Midge pinches his stomach.

“Pretty sure you’re kicked out of being Jewish if you say that in bed.”

“You’d think that would be the best place to say it,” Lenny counters. She’s literally got his balls in her hand and he’s still coming up with jokes, she’s never seen anything more delightful. “Seeing as he’s not all that important where we’re concerned, or so I hear, been a while since I went to shul.”

“Don’t tell my father that.”

“Believe me, there are many things I never intend to tell your father,” Lenny promises her, and so she rewards him by going back to sucking at the underside of his cock.

His hands stay in the bedsheets at first, as she slowly works her way up, gets him nice and wet, a little sloppy because she’s in a rush and she’s pretty sure he likes it that way—and then she grabs his wrists and plants his fingers in her hair.

“Tug,” she orders, and then to make sure he follows those orders, she clears her throat (it’s been a while since she did her little toothbrush trick, the one that kept her gag reflex silent, but you know what they say about bikes and sex—other than never have sex on one of them) and slides her mouth down, takes as much of his cock in as she can.

Lenny’s fingers tighten in her hair, he most definitely tugs, and she hasn’t heard this much swearing since the day Ethan hit Joel in the balls with a building block (long story).

She’s always gotten a thrill out of this, or at least, she did at first, but that thrill faded a bit later on into the marriage when it stopped feeling like a fun trick she chose to do and began to feel more like another wifely duty like making brisket. It was another part of her that made her the best, perfect, but it wasn’t something she did for herself.

Now, she’s doing this for herself. Because dammit, Lenny’s got a nice cock and she wants him to feel good and it’s making _her_ feel good and she likes the weight and stretch of it and the way he’s tugging at her hair like—

“Midge, hey, whoa,” and Lenny _yanks_ , and ouch, oh, okay.

She pulls off, stares up at him from underneath her lashes, and for the first time since she’s met him, Lenny Bruce has not a single word to say.

“Did you have any requests or feedback?” she asks him politely, like she’s taking his dinner order.

Lenny bursts out laughing and tugs her back up until they’re nose to nose. “Please tell me I can fuck you, please let me fuck you.”

Nobody’s ever said _please_ before. It’s more like, _I need to be in you_ , or, _if I don’t get to fuck you I’ll die,_ which are very nice and flattering things to say and she likes hearing them, but still, it’s really, unexpectedly good to be asked like that. Like it’s not assumed. Like she can say no and he’ll back down.

“Yes,” she tells him, because it was never going to be otherwise when they started this.

Lenny slides two, then three fingers in, as if he’s got to double check, be sure, and then she pushes herself up, nails digging into his chest, and sinks down onto him. “Fuck,” she blurts out, and then she just can’t stop, _fuck, fuck, fuck_ pouring out of her as she works him in until their hips are flush.

“I think I found religion,” Lenny croaks.

“Might not want to mention the specifics of how to the rabbi,” Midge replies, all the breath punched out of her.

She takes a moment, lets her body remember that oh yes, this is fun and we’re not going to actually die, and then she starts moving. It feels good, gets in hot and deep the way she likes it, and he’s _throbbing_ and she feels like she can just take and take and take in a way she hasn’t, not ever, always having to play games and be polite but not here, not like this.

“Fuckin’ beautiful,” Lenny murmurs, and she’s not sure if he’s aware that he’s saying that out loud, his hands sliding over her front, her breasts, squeezing her, fingers playing with her hair, until she’s shaking all over.

Her thighs are getting tired and she’s close, but not as close as he is, and she’s not sure if she should say something—but before she can Lenny sits up and she shrieks as that changes the angle (more like a sheep bleating, honestly, the barn’s almost full now), claws at the back of his shoulders, bites his neck, gets _savage_ and he gets savage right back, tugging at her, nipping at her jaw, sucking kisses from her lips until they’re raw.

“Let me, can I?” and she doesn’t know what he’s asking but it doesn’t matter because the answer is still _yes_ , and Lenny flips them over, hikes her leg up around his shoulder, and snaps his hips into her.

There really isn’t a good animal comparison for the sound she’s making now, the wail she lets out because it feels like he’s scraping right against the edge of _sogoodtoomuch_ as he drives into her, the both of them as undignified as possible, racing, on top of each other in their movements just like in their conversations, running pell-mell but never quite crashing into each other, somehow in sync.

His mouth crashes against hers for a final time, and she’s honestly okay if she doesn’t come again, the first time was fantastic and this, this right here is making stars explode behind her eyes, in her throat, but then Lenny reaches his hand down and presses, rubs hard against her clit, and she bites his tongue as her whole body seizes up.

She can taste blood and would make an apology if she could get her mouth to work, but then she realizes he’s coming, shaking, dropping kisses all over her mouth like secret praises.

“I think that counts as my exercise for the year,” Lenny notes, his chest heaving.

“Dogs,” Midge says.

He looks up at her. “What?”

“Dogs. I did all the other animals.”

Lenny eyes her for a second, and then smirks. “Well, you’re panting like one right now, I’d say that counts.”

And of course, of course he got the joke, figured it out and kept pace, and she wants to laugh or maybe cry or maybe tell him some very embarrassing things but instead she gets up and goes into the bathroom to wash her face (and the rest of her) and make sure they won’t both be sleeping in things they regret.

Lenny, however, just walks right past her and turns on the shower. “Faster this way.”

His boyish grin is fooling no one. And she's never done it in a shower before. Never let Joel see the mess that was made of her face in the process. But. “If you get soap in my eyes, I will kill you. No jury would convict me.”

“I actually think there are some mafiosi who’d pay you a bounty.”

* * *

When she opens her eyes, it’s morning, and the utter panic that hits her almost makes her throw up.

Nobody has seen her without her face on in the morning. Without her carefully done up mask. But she didn’t—she took a shower and washed her face and she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open and she didn’t even _think_ about it—

She rolls over, and Lenny’s already awake, a notebook in hand with some messily scrawled half-jokes on it, staring at her.

Staring at her like she’s the only thing he can see, the only star in the sky.

“You’re staring,” she tells him.

He grins at her and sets the notebook aside. “So’re you. Fortunately for me, I have a much better view. Don’t know what to do about you, though.”

“It’s like zoo animals,” she replies, and lets him start kissing down her neck.

“You’re comparing me to a zoo animal?”

“You’ve been compared to worse.”

“…that I have. Carry on.”

“Lenny?”

He looks up at her, immediately serious. “That’s my name.”

“What am I going to do?” _About my family, about Shy, about my future._

Lenny rests his chin on her chest. “You’re going to let me—if you want to—make love to the most beautiful woman I know, and then you’re going to order whatever you want from room service, and then you’re going to go shopping because I hear you like that, and while you’re shopping I’m going to make some calls to some people I know, people who are in need of a smart, hilarious comic named Mrs. Maisel. Then you’re going to meet me at the bar in the lobby, and we’re going to have a drink and practice jokes on each other, and then we’re going to figure it out.”

Midge nods, because she’s fucked up, but so has Lenny, and if anyone knows how to get back up on their feet after that, it’s him. “Okay.”

Lenny runs his thumb along her bottom lip. “Good.” It’s barely a whisper.

Then he sits up and grins. “Or we could order room service and _then_ get to the fun part, you know with the whipped cream—”

Midge smacks him in the face with a pillow.


End file.
